Art world waits for Turner Prize

Art world waits for Turner Prize

Turner Prize to be awarded in Gateshead's Baltic

The Turner Prize is to be awarded in a non-Tate venue for the first time when the ceremony takes place at the Baltic art gallery in Gateshead later.

The contemporary art prize has been a hit with locals, with an exhibition of the four shortlisted artists' works drawing more than 100,000 visitors.

Installation sculptors Martin Boyce and Karla Black, video artist Hilary Lloyd and painter George Shaw are nominated.

Photographer Mario Testino will present the £25,000 prize live on Channel 4.

Queues of visitors stretched out of the gallery and along Gateshead quayside after the free exhibition of the nominees' work opened in October.

The annual exhibition and ceremony have only been held outside London once before in the Turner's 27-year history, at Tate Liverpool in 2007. The Turner's traditional home is Tate Britain.

In the future, the prize will be held in a different city around the UK every other year, returning to London in the years between. It will be held in Londonderry in 2013.

Bookmakers believe this year's favourites are Glasgow-based Martin Boyce, who has used modernist influences to create artificial trees and a leaning litter bin, and George Shaw, who employs model-making paint to depict the Coventry housing estate where he grew up.

Karla Black, also based in Glasgow, creates large-scale installations with materials like cellophane, sugar paper, bath bombs, vaseline and moisturising cream, while Hilary Lloyd is exhibiting snatched footage of shapes including the moon and a tower block.

Art world waits for Turner Prize